Video 5:57
Cattle exports

With the first shipment of live cattle to Indonesia due to set sail from Darwin in the coming days, Louisa Rebgetz talks with Meat and Livestock Australia's Scott Hansen.

Transcript

LOUISA REBGETZ, PRESENTER: The first shipment of live cattle to Indonesia is due to set sail from Darwin in the coming days. It offers some relief for pastoralists who've been struggling since exports were banned two months ago due to animal cruelty concerns. The Four Corners program that triggered the ban, heavily criticised Meat and Livestock Australia which provides training and equipment to Indonesian abattoirs. I spoke to the MLA's Managing Director Scott Hansen earlier this week. Scott Hansen welcome to the program.

SCOTT HANSEN, MEAT AND LIVESTOCK AUSTRALIA: Thank you very much.

LOUISA REBGETZ: Were you aware of the extent of the animal cruelty issues that were shown in the Four Corners program?

SCOTT HANSEN, MEAT AND LIVESTOCK AUSTRALIA: Certainly the fact that we have people on the ground carrying out animal welfare training and making improvements in infrastructure is recognition of the fact that there are poor handling in a number of facilities in Indonesia. If animal welfare was as world class in Indonesia as it is in Australian facilities we wouldn't be needing to make the investments that we've been making over the past decades to try lift and try to improve the animal welfare standards in that market place.

LOUISA REBGETZ: But if there was the training there prior to the Four Corners program, prior to the ban coming in and producers are giving you a levy, paying you to oversee this process doesn't that highlight or question exactly what you were doing prior to that?

SCOTT HANSEN, MEAT AND LIVESTOCK AUSTRALIA: Well it doesn't because what we know is that the significant improvements in animal wlefare that have been made within the Indonesian supply chains starting right back from the on farm, on property animal welfare through to the assembly depots, shipping, feed lots, transport to abattoirs and those abattoirs on the whole in Indonesia has seen significant improvement in animal welfare standards and that animal welfare standards, I mean it's been driven by the fact that Australia who's the only country, I mean Australian cattle producers are the only people investing in animal welfare activities outside their own country in their export market places. Those improvements have generated significant benefits. No one believes that the cruelty that was shown on the Four Corners program is widespread or is the norm in Indonesian abattoirs.

LOUISA REBGETZ: What responsibility does MLA take for what has happened to producers?

SCOTT HANSEN, MEAT AND LIVESTOCK AUSTRALIA: Our responsibility is about the efficient and effective investment of their levy funds in line with the policies and the programs that the peak industry bodies that represent Australian cattle producers, they set the directon for our investment in infrastructure and animal welfare training so our job is to ensure the delivery of those programs in line with their expectations of continuing to make incremental improvements in animal welfare.

LOUISA REBGETZ: Those programs, what's happened has obviously shown there's a few problems with those programs that these things weren't picked up. What are you going to do to improve that?

SCOTT HANSEN, MEAT AND LIVESTOCK AUSTRALIA: We're moving to a new arrangement where the individual supply chains, who take responsibilty for the purchasing of the cattle, their treatment in feed yards and their supply through to the slaughterhouses, they now have the responsibility to maintain that line of site from our export depots here all the way through to point of slaughter in Indonesia. Now sporadic incidents of cruelty that get picked up in future will be the responsibilty of that supply chain and that supply chain will be the ones that are punished. What we won't see is a blanket ban on a whole industry.

LOUISA REBGETZ: How many abbatoirs now in Indonesia would you say meet those standards?

SCOTT HANSEN, MEAT AND LIVESTOCK AUSTRALIA: There's seven abattoirs in Indonesia that have now been audited to the new standards that have been spelt out, the new guidelines that have been laid down by the Australian Government, and have passed audit. Were aware that there's another nine or ten, depending on the progress in these last two three days, that are ready to go to audit as well.

LOUISA REBGETZ: The equipment that was being used in the footage that was being shown by Four Corners was Meat and Livestock Australia equipment. What new equipment have you got to ensure that we don't see footage like that again?

SCOTT HANSEN, MEAT AND LIVESTOCK AUSTRALIA: No and that's right there was a range of equipment shown and there was also some facilities shown that didn't have any infrastructure in place and I guess that was that was the position that the industry was confronted with when exports really started to grow into Indonesia. Practical cattle men from the Northern Territory were part of the group that helped design a simple and basic infrastructural improvement, which is now referred to as the 'mark 1 box, now 'mark 1' was called 'mark 1' because it was never intended to be the final resting point for our infrastructure investment. It was a starting point and it was what we could introduce that was an incremental step, but we've gone through from 'mark 1' through to 'mark 2', 'mark 3' and we're now at 'mark 4'. Since June we've also been working with a number of chains on introducing stunning boxes into their facilities.

LOUISA REBGETZ: All of this has been far too slow though.

SCOTT HANSEN, MEAT AND LIVESTOCK AUSTRALIA: Obviously it hasn't been at the rate of pace that the Australian public and the Australian Government would like to see, nor the Australian industry. The challenge for us however, is we're working in a foreign country, we're working with foreign companies and we're working without any regulatory power, any commercial supply power and so the rate at which we've worked has been the rate at which they have wanted us to invest and work in their supply chains in moving them forward with animal welfare.